ABSTRACT
The purpose of the study is to examine concerns and anxieties of elderly people while walking on roads. Whether these anxieties and concerns differ according to walking difficulty is also investigated. A total of 342 elderly people from 60 to 87 years-old who are registered in two human resource dispatch agencies participated in the questionnaire. The questionnaire included scales of concerns and anxiety while walking on roads, visual and physical walking difficulty, and daily walking behavior. Both visual and physical walking difficulties increased anxiety about walking conditions. They also increased concerns about path conditions and convenient route. Older people with difficulty seemed to need better conditions and felt anxiety about bad conditions because of their smaller attentional resource to the conditions. In spite of this, people with physical difficulty did not assess safety as more important than those without physical difficulty. This may increase their involvement in pedestrian accidents.
